


Torn

by knightship



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dubious Morality, F/M, Laura as the Alpha, M/M, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Pack, Persuasion of Minors, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightship/pseuds/knightship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale's life would have been so different if he'd just gone with Laura back to Beacon Hills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maybes are for babies, in debate club

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I've published in a while, so I'm...rusty. If you feel like I've missed important tags or I haven't tagged properly to warn of possible triggers, feel free to call me out on it. Just to be clear, this work will include multiple references to a dub-con/non-con relationship between a minor and an adult, reflections on murder, stalking of minors, and possible sex scenes between a minor and an adult. 
> 
> Criticism is always welcome.

Killing Peter isn’t easy, but then again, nothing ever is.  
  
Laura does the burial herself as Derek stands over the body, watching it to make sure it doesn’t move. Not that it’d be beyond Peter to play dead until they’d buried him, then rise up out of the ground like a zombie. Derek hates zombie movies. Has ever since Bradley, their older brother, made him sit through the entirety of Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Not that that was a zombie movie, but it left such a lasting impression that he hates stairs, dogs, and zombies simply on principle.  
  
The wolfsbane rope makes his claws keep popping out, until Laura takes the end of it and winds it in a spiral. Just the sight of that loop in the dirt makes his stomach lurch. God, he doesn’t want revenge, not like Peter did. He’d like to make Kate hurt slowly, excruciatingly, in all the ways terrify her (like it did him when he was fifteen and too lust-stupid to know that being afraid during sex isn’t an added thrill, it’s just a recipe for disaster), but he’d also like to retain whatever sanity he has left. Laura- Laura’s the Alpha, and he’ll do what she needs him to do, but he’s not going to just roll over and let her do whatever she wants, either. He’s her second, it’s his right to challenge her.  
  
At least, that’s what he tells himself when he says, “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”  
  
“What do you mean “it’s not a good idea”? It’s a great idea. It’s the only idea either of us has, and seeing as I’m older, I think that means it’s the plan of action, numbnuts,” she says, and he can see how restless she is, how geared up and excited. It’s like Peter’s death (murder, Kate hisses quietly in his mind) hasn’t even touched her.  
  
“Because going around biting irresponsible, self-involved high schoolers is going to turn out so well,” he says, shuffling his hands in his pockets. Laura is eating waffle fries like she expects someone to take them from her, dirt in her hair and her legs spread like his, sloppy, with her boots tack-tack-tacking away on the red-yellow linoleum of the greasy dinner floor. Derek can’t eat, can’t stand that he can’t because he’s hungry, and the dissonance of it makes him want to claw up the walls and open the sticky red vinyl booth seat until it spits out yellow foam. ** ******  
  


He gets a straw wrapper between his fingers before he can think about it, shredding them into centimeter pieces. It makes seventy ragged little strips, and he lines them up again as close as he can. They still won’t fit back together like he wants them to, and the frustration of what’s supposed to be a soothing act is making him grind his teeth.

****

When he looks up, Laura’s stopped eating with a fry hanging in her hand, and is watching him with that sternum-cracking pity and sadness that has him growling before he can stop it.

****

“Derek-”

****

“No,” he says, and sweeps the straw wrapper into a pile with Laura’s ketchup-soaked napkin, “We’re not talking about this. I’m handling it.”

****

“After what just happened? I really don’t think you are,” she says, too soft and too much like their mother. There’s a wad of anger in his throat that’s hard to swallow past.

****

“Laura, I’m fine. But this idea is stupid. Do you not remember how fucking dumb we were in high school? And we knew most of this stuff, we knew how to not kill people whenever we were stressing over a test or a sport-”

****

“Or a girl,” Laura says, and his heart threatens to stop. She just grins, gesturing with her fry.

****

“Remember? You were all torn up about that girl in ninth grade, what was her name...Casey?”

****

“Cassidy,” he corrects, and it’s like time stopped and then restarted. Relief has never felt so goddamn sweet.

****

“It’s not going to be that hard to teach them, Derek. Kids are like sponges, you know? They’ll probably view it like a video game or a comic book. Get bit by the crazy hot girl, that’s me,” she says, fluttering her eyelashes in the way she knows makes him laugh, “get super cool powers, great power comes with great responsibility, we Yoda them, plus 50 xp, level up!” She throws her hands up as she says it, flinging her fry into the booth behind her. Some fifty year old lady sputters, and Derek snorts and ducks his head when she whirls to glare at him.

****

Laura’s sniggering into her fries, and for a second it’s easy. They didn’t just kill the only family they had left, they’re not wolves within a flock of sheep and shepherds at the same time, they’re not debating whether or not they’re going to indoctrinate teenagers into what basically adds up to a cult, and Derek isn’t freaking the hell out about it all. They’re dumb twenty-somethings getting in trouble like teenagers, and he wants this more than he wants air or peace or time travel to exist.

****

They sober a little, and Laura kicks his foot under the table, her eyes curious.

****

“You’re alright,” she says, not a question, but probing enough for him to take as one if he wants. He frowns at the table top, scratching at stain on it.

****

“...Maybe.”

****

“Hmm?”

****

“Nothing, Laura.”

****

“Don’t nothing me,” she says, and now it’s sharp. He looks up. Laura can be demanding, can be willful and dangerous and reckless in ways that make him cringe, but she’s never mean, never sharp like this. He leans forward, his voice low as he talks, not meeting her eyes to show he’s not threatening her but trying to convey how fucking earnest he is about this.

****

“Maybe we should wait awhile before we do anything. Laura, you’re not- this is giving you some kind of power trip. Being home, I mean. Before, you didn’t give a shit about expanding our pack and securing our territory or-”

****

“Maybe I just want to get us back on track,” she says, defensive like she never is, and when he meets her eye she’s looking at him, evaluating. He can feel himself bristling up, goose pimples all down his spine.

****

“If this is some misguided attempt at trying to help me with my shit, Laura, then fucking drop it right now. I don’t need you going around turning people for my benefit, Christ,” he snaps, too loud. A passing waitress cranes her neck to get a look at his pissed off face, and he feels too brittle and too big and too dark for this cheery, greasy little dinner with it’s yellow lights and it’s yellow floors and it’s yellow air.

****

“Derek, you have to admit that you’ve been drifting without a sense of pack. I know I have! Will you just give this idea a chance, maybe? We could actually build something for ourselves, we could help someone else, we could be a family for some kid that doesn’t have any better-”

****

“What, you have someone in mind?” he snaps, sarcastic and rolling, and when she grimaces guiltily, he sighs and tries to block out fucking pissed he is, but it’s not working. He wants to shake her and growl at her and loom over her, but she’d smack him to the floor and roar until he couldn’t hear anything but ringing in his ears.

****

“Whatever. Show me who, and I’ll think about it.”

****

Laura beams, and rips a fry in two with her gleaming smile.

****

“Ah, don’t worry, champ, I got this one in the bag.”

 


	2. Learned everything from big sis, including how to steal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a note on timelines and the situation: Laura took her damn sweet time coming back to Beacon Hills in this fic because she wanted Derek with her, but there were some consequences of that. Firstly, is that while Peter didn't become an Alpha and subsequently bite Scott, a lot of the other circumstances, such as killing the movie store clerk, traumatizing both Jackson and Lydia, getting caught on film, and a lot of the canon, early season one, smaller-scale stuff happened. As will be evidenced by this chapter, the Argents have moved back to Beacon Hills, and Scott and Allison's romance is pretty normal right now. At the current point of the story, I'd say that it's about a month before the winter dance, and Derek and Laura have been in town for about a week.

“You lied. This is so not a good idea.”

They’re at another greasy little table, this time in the food court at the mall, and Laura’s wearing a fucking dress. With a floral print. It’s awful, especially considering that she’s still wearing her blood-and-mud-and-probably-shit-and-who-knows-what-else biker boots and leather jacket. Some girl told her she looked great ten minutes ago in American Eagle, and Derek wants to shoot himself in the face just for the express joy of reality. 

“It’s the best,” she counters, popping funnel cake into her mouth in little pinchfuls. He hasn’t slept in a week and sunglasses and slouching are the only way he can deal with this mall right now. It’s loud and bright and it stinks of too many people hurrying around and eating bad food. And the two kids Laura wants wrangled into all their damage are sitting twenty feet away, one talking low and wistful about someone named Allison, and the other looking as much like he wants to carve out his own eyeballs as Derek does.

“I don’t see what the hell these two are worth to you,” he complains, inching lower in his seat. His neck is hitting the top of the backrest, and he’s sure he looks like a bored, over-sized child and could not care less.

She looks over at him, her mouth slowly falling from a grin to a frown. She smacks him in the shoulder, kicking at his legs for good measure.

“Sit up, you slob. Come on. Don’t be such a sourpuss and just look at them, really pay attention!”

He sighs the long, over drawn sigh of the put-upon and sits up, leaning back in his chair to study the two of them.

“Okay, so the dark-haired kid is Scott, right?”

“Mmhmm,” Laura says, sucking powdered sugar off her fingers.

“And the other one is Stiles,” he says, dragging the name confusedly over his tongue. She nods, approving.

“Alright. Scott’s in love with Allison,” he says, already feeling dread curdling in his chest. That sounds like he’s never going to like it, ever.

“Stop making that face, it’s awful,” she says, and he can hear the crinkle of amusement and affection in her voice without looking over. Funny how all of their best compliments to each other are always veiled as hateful bickering.

“Stiles is fed up with his shit, judging from all of his eyerolls.”

“No, he’s just a little bored. Scott talks about Allison all the time.”

“No shit?” he says, pulling on fake amazement, and Laura snorts and tries to cram funnel cake in his mouth. He snags it out of her fingers with his teeth and swallows it, all in one. It tastes like processed dough and oil and the cancer that the woman who made it doesn’t know she has. It’s not bad, for mall food.

Suddenly Stiles, in the midst of glancing around in boredom, stops, staring. At the reflective window of a store window just to Laura’s right, three feet far enough that it doesn’t look like he’s looking at her, but he is, and he suddenly smacks Scott in the arm and hisses, “Dude, don’t look now, but remember I told you I thought I was being followed? I think she might be here.”

He’s quiet and subtle, looking for all the world like he just got pissed at his friend for saying something stupid, but Derek can hear the stress in his voice and realizes he’s staring intently.

When he glances at Laura, she’s so smug he wants to laugh and punch her at the same time.

“I told you,” she purrs, crossing her legs with a flourish. 

“Alright, so I get him. He’s good. Smart, observant, crafty. But why Sc- oh, are you shitting me right now?” 

Scott McCall stands up from his table, despite the way Stiles is very clearly trying to hold him back, and strides right up to Laura, fuming.

“Are you following my friend?”

Laura looks up, mouth slightly open, eyes wide and head cocked to the side. As vacant and air-headed as a blow-up doll.

“What?”

“Hey, whoa there, dude, uh, this is all a big misunderstanding right now, do not mind my friend here at all, he’s going through a lot of- anyways. Yeah, hi, I’m Stiles, nice to meetcha,” Stiles says, bumping Scott slightly out of the way and offering Laura his hand. She perks, shaking it and grinning.

“Oh, hi! I’m Laura Hale, and this is my brother, Derek.”

There’s a momentary spark in Stiles at “Hale”, which he passes to Scott with a significant glance. Fuck them both sideways with a fucking rake.

“Oh, so you’re back in the area?” Scott asks, as emotionally astute as Ron Weasley, and Derek’s hands bunch into fists in his pockets.

“Yeah,” he drawls, staccato and tense, “we’ve decided to fix up our old house. Get in touch with old neighbors. That kind of thing.”

There’s an awkward moment where Stiles clearly wants to book it, Scott still looks mad, and Laura’s trying to glare daggers at him out of the corner of her eye. She switches tactics as easy as first to second gear, going from airhead to stunningly sunny and polite but brilliant in an instant.

“Now, I think there’s clearly been a misstep in communication. What you call following, I call gathering intel,” she says, her grin seductive. The step-ball-change of Stiles heartbeat makes Derek want to curl up with his hands over his ears and say “lalalalanotlistening!” for the next day, because arousal and his sister in the same sentence will never cease to gross him out.

“Gathering intel about me?” he asks, laughing nervously, and she stands, her hips swaying in towards him as she slouches back. His eyes dip down all the way to those hips and then back up, quick as you please, but Derek still wants to flay him alive for it.

“About the both of you,” she says, letting the force of her smile hit Scott for a moment, and then back to Stiles. Scott looks kind of affronted by it, actually, which is a breath of fresh air.

“What for?” Stiles asks, and he seems to have picked up on the way Laura’s leaning in towards him, mouth still slightly open. She’s smelling him, and it’s just vaguely threatening enough that he takes a step back.

“Oh, but that would spoil the surprise, wouldn’t it? Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. I’ll catch up with you two sometime soon. We can chat, get to know each other. Come on, Derek. We’ll see you boys later,” she says, practically purring, and when she starts to walk away she brushes against Stiles, just enough to mark him.

Derek listens to them trying to analyze her all the way out into the parking lot, until Laura leans against the Camaro and says, “Well, what do you think?”

He thinks about it for a minute, hands in his pockets.

“I’m still not convinced,” is all he can think to say, but it’s as good as surrender anyway.


	3. You're not as clever as you were at fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes Derek being triggered by something Laura says, and the accompanying anxiety which leads to compulsion. His symptoms have never been this bad before because Kate is the trigger, and in New York he chose not to think of her and was able to quite easily. Now that they're back in Beacon Hills he's running into triggers left and right, so this is the worst that his symptoms have been, and they will continue to get worse. Laura has never realized that he has a problem to the degree which he does, and that is why she's never suggested he get help (although obviously both of them should have after the fire, but were unable to due to the obvious reason that they're werewolves).

Derek’s making Easy-Mac when Laura comes into the apartment, listening to her iPod on shuffle and trying not to sing along because girl pop, come on, he has some dignity. 

“Hey, sis, you want some mac and cheese?” he calls when he hears her keys in the lock. There’s no response except for Laura kicking the door shut behind her, and he looks up when she strides into the kitchen. She’s got a laptop in her hands, and she looks like she’s shaking. He drops the spoon instantly and goes to her, cupping her hands.

“Laura? Laura, what is it, talk to me,” he begs, and she looks up at him with her eyes red and angry.

“It’s Peter’s laptop. I found it in the staircase at the house,” she says, and pushes it into his hands. He feels like he’s been sucker punched in the gut, and on the next inhale, he gets a hint of Peter’s scent, stale and from Before. The stench of ash is layered over top, and for a moment he imagines it, as he has a thousand times- the house a cage, the white paint peeling from the walls, the terror and the screams, the smell of burning hair, cotton, latex, wood. Flesh. But most of all the way the flames lick up the walls, engulf the ceiling, the heat and the way his body instinctively sings with adrenaline at the thought.

He puts the laptop down on the counter before he drops it, and opens it up. The screen lights up, asking for a password, and he looks at Laura.

“I tried everything I could think of, and I didn’t get anywhere,” she says, staring at it like if she just looks hard enough it’ll give itself over. She’s probably thinking about secret manifestos of Peter’s madness, but Derek’s thinking about family pictures he’s forgotten about, that Peter might have saved because Peter was like that, he took pictures of everyone and stored them everywhere.

Derek tries some possible passwords, half-hearted, as Laura goes to the stove and messes with the macaroni. 

“Have you thought anymore of how we’re going to convince them?” she asks, when he’s given up on trying. He frowns at the keyboard.

“I did a little research on Scott. His dad took off on him, so it’s just his mom and him. He’s got discipline problems. I thought I might be able to pull the big brother act,” he says, tapping his fingers and then arranging the silverware in the strainer so that it goes forks, knives, spoons, all the mismatched odds-and-ends pieces they picked up at the thrift store arranged by height and general wear. Neither of them says anything for a moment, trying to forget that once upon a time Derek was a big brother, and now he’s the youngest child.

“Good. That’s a good plan,” Laura says, watching him. After a second, he has to scatter the silverware and do it again. He can’t meet her eyes.

“So for Stiles, did you have anything?”

“No,” Derek says reluctantly, because what he managed to find out about Stiles while watching him go through his classes today was that he was too smart by half, and any con they could come up with would have a tell that he’d pick up on, unless they played it hard, fast, and dirty enough that he’d be blinded.

“I thought I could just sleep with him,” Laura says, distracted as she takes a bite of macaroni. It’s not done yet.

The silverware is snatched up out of the strainer, and he puts it away meticulously in the drawer before he can breathe enough to say,

“You can’t fucking do that, Laura.”

“Why not?”

“Because you- it’s fucking illegal, that’s why!”

It’s the first time he’s truly raised his voice in anger at Laura in ages, and she sets the spoon down in the pot of macaroni and turns to look at him. His hands are shaking. He crosses his arms and tucks them under his armpits and stares her in the eye, stares down at her because he’s taller and he wills himself not to crumple in front of her.

He’s gotten a lot of shit done by sheer force of will before, and yet it’s his greatest testament of strength to date that he doesn’t fall to his knees and beg his sister’s forgiveness when she stares back up at him.

“You want to tell me what this is really about?” she asks, slow and careful, and he doesn’t realize his claws are out until he feels the hot prickle of blood running down his side, soaking his shirt. And just like that, he can feel it everywhere. He can feel air particles pushing against his skin, dirt and sweat and blood and her spit, her sweat, her blonde hair tickling his face and the back of his neck and her smell in his lungs, burning him up with the wolfsbane he didn’t know the scent of yet-

He breaks out of Laura’s gaze and walks to the bathroom and locks himself in. He strips off his clothes and washes the blood out of his shirt. He gets in the shower and turns the water all the way up, and the building has good enough water pressure that the blast of it hurts, and it’s hot enough to scald his skin red, red as a lobster and red as sunburn, red enough to give him first degree burns that heal as he scrubs with soap until his skin bleeds weakly and heals over, goddammit. He wants to scrub his skin until he’s sure all three layers don’t smell like Kate, until his blood is free of the electricity she used on him and his wrists aren’t bitten with handcuff marks. 

He becomes abruptly aware of how he’s sucking in breath after too-quick, watery breath when Laura pounds on the door.

“Derek? Are you alright? You sound like you’re panicking, Derek, don’t make me bust down this door and save your naked ass from a panic attack, man,” she says, and she sounds like she’s on the edge of panic herself. He zeroes in on her heartbeat, the wet-dry expansion of her lungs in her chest.

“Just-just stay there for a second so I can hear your heart,” he croaks, and she goes still, her breaths going deeper, her heart slowing, each rush of blood a balm until he feels less exposed, less open. He does, however, feel guilty that he’s worried her, and angry at himself for his lack of control.

He gets out of the shower and slings a towel around his hips before he opens the door, and she leans against the doorframe, her mouth screwed up in thoughtfulness. The first thing she does is explain her rationale.

“It’s a good plan. He’s insecure and of middle-low class on the high school totem pole. Getting laid is like his prime objective right now. But he’s smart enough that he’s not going to be wooed to our pack by getting to second base with me. And he’s-”

She stops. Being at a loss for words is a new thing for Laura, but he’s found that her describing Alpha things to him usually falls into this category, so he waits, enjoying her violently determined and frustrated face in the easiest way.

“He’s good, Derek. Not like, in the moral compass kind of way- he’s actually pretty Slytherin in that respect, he does what’s right because he’s been taught to value that. But as a wolf, he’d be- I can see it, all of it. He’d have you jockeying for your place in a couple months, Derek, you can’t even imagine it. And Stiles smells like a mate,” she says, giving him a significant look at that. He puffs out a sigh that sounds like doubt.

“Really, Laura? If he is, you know that means as soon as you turn him you’re locked in. It’s a lifelong thing, and you’ve never really...” he trails off, trying to insinuate “done the long-term relationship thing” in a way that isn’t totally offensive.

“Baby bro, I love how you are more concerned about me possibly being mates with this kid than you are that he’d usurp your place as my Second,” she says, patting him on the cheek and then fucking up his wet hair. He snaps at her wrist with a playful growl, and she snorts and pushes his chest, tweaking a nipple until he grunts and pushes her back.

“Come on, macaroni’s getting cold,” she says, grinning, but her eyes are careful. She’s being delicate with him. He just hopes she’s as gentle with Stiles.

An idea flares at the base of his neck, and slithers it’s way up. Maybe he can prevent this. Maybe he can tip Stiles off. Maybe he doesn’t have to watch another abomination in the making.


	4. Yellow hair and jet black teeth, she digs her claws underneath

The thing about tipping Stiles off is that he can’t just march up to him in the grocery store and say, “My sister wants to sleep with you, and you shouldn’t because it’d be traumatizing for me to watch you make the same mistakes I did. Also she wants to turn you into a werewolf.”

Well. Technically he could. But Laura might break his leg for it, and he kind of doesn’t want to have to heal a femur, it’ll take way too long.

So he takes to watching Stiles and trying to come up with something to say that doesn’t sound ridiculously cryptic. It’s surprisingly hard not to get caught- Stiles’ instincts are primed like a trip wire, and it only takes a moment of staring for Stiles to tense suddenly and look up, brow furrowed as he searches for whatever tipped him off. Being a Sheriff’s kid (and a part of him is smug that Laura managed to pick out someone who can get them off the hook with the law) has apparently given him a good head. Not that that prevents him from going out at night to walk to Scott’s house and lurk outside his bedroom window. It’s almost funny. Stiles is practically a wolf already, all he needs are the teeth and the eyes and he’ll be set.

Derek’s watching them on the lacrosse field from the woods. Scott is atrocious, mostly because he wheezes so much, the air squealing wet through the constriction of his lungs. Stiles is too nervous to do any good. Both of them have the potential to be good, they just need to let go and do it. 

He’s trying to remember the rules of lacrosse (honestly, the game makes no sense to him) when he hears a near-silent footfall behind him and turns to look.

It’s Isaac Lahey. Derek has noticed him around his trips into the school, and he always smells of quiet despair and desperation. Up close, there’s a subtler layer of panic and fear, and the type of pain that is all-encompassing and resigned.

“I see you watching them all the time,” Isaac says, his voice unsure but steady, “and your sister. You should leave them alone.”

Derek turns to look at him fully, to really take him in, and there is something broken and needy in Isaac that shouts at Derek to pay attention.

“And if we didn’t? What would you do?” he asks. Isaac snaps his spine straighter, but he looks smaller, frailer for it.

“I’d tell the Sheriff. He wouldn’t like it that you were watching his son all the time.”

Derek nods and walks closer to Isaac. He starts to back away, but then Derek reaches forward and claps a hand to his shoulder, just tight enough to be a warning.

Isaac’s reaction is instantaneous- a galloping heartbeat, a flinch deep in the muscles under Derek’s hand, and the way he suddenly can’t look Derek in the eye. Laura had a boyfriend once, in New York, some weirdo named Shaun that had a Butterfree tattoo on his hip and floppy hair. Once Derek had threatened to hit him because he’d said something terrible to Laura, and he’d reacted the same, then thrust his chin up defiant and dared him to. Laura had told him that Shaun had been abused as a kid.

“Maybe I’m trying to help them. Maybe I could help you too,” he says, gentles his voice and lets go. Isaac narrows his eyes suspiciously and then there’s another set of footsteps behind him that makes him turn.

Derek turns to hard, dry, rigid ice. Subconsciously, he’s always treated her like a wolf because he recognized the danger in her and didn’t care, but now he uses it eagerly to feed his panic and unease seamlessly into anger. Even if she can’t smell it on him, she can read it, if her smirk is anything to go by.

“Isaac, get out of here,” Derek snaps, and the tension snapping in his voice and in the air has Isaac gone without another glance. 

“Howdy, cowboy,” Kate purrs cheerily. There’s a taser in her hand. He very carefully doesn’t move. 

“So, I saw you and your sister were back in town and took down that crazy uncle of yours. Good on you. Honestly didn’t think the two of you would be able to handle it. Killing family? Not really your style,” she says, wrinkling her nose like she thinks she’s funny. His fists clench, his fangs extend into his lip and then quickly recede again. She pushes off of the tree she’s leaning on, taking long, sauntering steps towards him, taser changing hands lazily.

“I’ve seen you two watching these kids, too,” she drawls, canting her hips at him and close enough to breathe in. Her scent hasn’t changed- gunpowder and coconut shampoo. When she traces a hand thoughtfully down his chest, he snatches up her fingers and snarls in her face, not bothering to hide how much he wants to rip off her face or crush her hand in his grip. And he would, but she smirks and puts the taser gently against his stomach.

“There are five hunters waiting just downwind, sweetheart. All it’d take was my yell to bring them running,” she purrs, and he reluctantly releases them.

“What makes you think I’d give them the chance to hear you scream?” he spits instead, and her grin is the one that he saw across eleven graves, when he met her eyes and realized exactly what he’d done.

“Oh, honey. You just don’t get it at all, do you?” She shakes her head with a pitying twist to her smile and strolls around him, her fingers skimming across his shoulders and the back of his neck. He struggles not to twitch out from under it, threatening to burst out of his own skin.

“See, Derek, what you and your sister don’t seem to understand is that this town is under hunter control. You bite any of these kids, even if they ask for it? I will skin your fine ass and wear you like a coat, and your precious Alpha too. In fact, I’ll make you watch,” she says, and the dark luster in his eyes is so obvious, it’s a wonder he never saw it. 

“You’ll pass that message along for me, won’t you?” she asks, so close he can smell her arousal. It makes him itch with disgust. Not because she's disgusting-she is- but because his body still lurches like he's a giddy little boy. She's not the only one he's been with, but his dick still remembers that she was the best, despite how much she scared him.

When he doesn’t reply, she curls her hand around his jaw with a final smirk and a little laugh, and then strides off through the forest with a sway in her walk.

He manages to keep his anger whorled up inside until he reaches the apartment, then blindly strips off his jacket and shirt. They both go in the trash. He’d burn them, but he has nowhere to do it and if Laura found out she’d flip. They’ve only been back a week and change, so he hasn’t had time to set up the pull-up bar that Laura always used to hit her head on when she tried to go in his room back in New York. But he has a door frame that might hold and a pretty heady fucking rage going on, so he digs his claws around the curve of the wood and gets into his routine.

Derek doesn’t do sets. He doesn’t do cool-downs. He does six straight hours of pull-ups and push-ups and sit-ups and everything else that burns his muscles until Laura comes home. She’s just off shift from the bar six blocks away and smells like tequila shooters when he drops off the door jamb, fingers bloody, and his legs abruptly feel like jello. 

“Oh, Derek,” she whispers, her eyes so sad, and he glares at her, shaking, and wrenches his dresser drawer open to find a clean shirt.

Laura comes up behind him and carefully says, "Derek? Are you okay?"

The shirt rips apart in his hands like its made of paper. He lets out a sharp, toneless sound of frustration and let's the pieces drop to the floor and pulls out another. There are smears of blood all over the clothes in the drawer now, not that it matters. At one point Laura will get tired of seeing him in stained things and throw them all out so that he has to replace them.

He tugs the shirt straight and works his jaw for a moment.

"The Argents know we're trying to recruit. If we bite anyone, they're going to take us out."

Laura grabs his elbow and tries to turn him to look at her, but he ducks his head. Rubbing that close to Kate made him feel slimy and he can't look her in the eye.

Laura's hand slips off and he can feel her staring.

"Good," she says, with more conviction than he's heard from her in ages, "because we're going to war."

He looks up, and his startled expression makes her frown.

"I know I said...look, making a new pack, it is for us, okay? But what Peter said, about Kate being the one who did it, about someone betraying us... I just can't let that go, Derek, even if they're dead. The Argents will pay."

He's so cold, and he doesn't know what to say. He entertains, briefly, the thought of telling her. The iron-clad truth that's kept him silent for six years rings out across his mind. She would kill him, no matter that they're all that's left. She can rebuild a pack easily, and once the truth was out, she wouldn't even miss him.

"Kate is mine," is what ends up coming out of his mouth, and something in his voice or the way he's rubbing his palm over his knuckles must give him away, because her mouth tightens and she nods.


	5. The term "adult siblings" is an oxymoron

It’s a Saturday the next morning, and Derek wakes up hard from a dream about Kate’s mouth. To say that starts him out on a bad note is an understatement, and when he’s waited the erection out and lumbers out into the kitchen, every inch of him regretfully sore, Laura is making faces at the mirror magnet on the fridge as she puts lipstick on in her underwear.

“I’m seducing Stiles today,” she say, somehow not closing her mouth at all as she talks.

He stands there for a minute, and lets himself feel every bit as awful as he wants.

“Look, maybe-”

“No, Derek. No maybe. This is happening, regardless of your weird hang-ups over it.” She turns to smack her lips together and give him an expectant look, like she’s willing him to be okay with it.

“You’re going to get caught. By his father,” he points out, and she shrugs.

“Nah. By the end of the day, he’ll love me.”

He sighs at the ceiling.

“There are other kids we should be looking at. And we can’t bite them, not one at a time.”

“I know that, stupid,” she snaps, doing something with her bra straps that makes her boobs look bigger. “We’ll get them all in one swoop, like initiating rushes into a fraternity. And what other kids?”

He tells her about Isaac, and about the girl with the blonde hair that seized on YouTube, and Vernon Boyd, who everyone seems to be scared of for no explicable reason, he seems like a giant teddy bear.

She’s giving him this look as he speaks that makes him cross his arms over his chest and lean against the door jamb, making himself look smaller.

“So you want to scrape the bottom of the barrel here and make an army of broken children. That’s noble of you, Derek,” she says, smiling a little like she’s proud, and he huffs angrily and shoulders her away from the fridge. He drinks her orange juice straight from the carton, just to piss her off, before he speaks again.

“You’re the one that said pack could be family for a kid who doesn’t have better,” he snaps, “not about this vendetta shit. Not an army.”

“Look, if we’re going to turn these kids, you’ve got to be backing me up, not tearing me apart,” she says, eyes flashing and hands on her hips, “so if you’ve got something to say, just fucking say it, Derek.”

He takes long enough to glare and screw the cap back onto the carton.

“Yeah, I’ve got something to fucking say. I say we should forget Beacon Hills, forget these kids and that house and we go back to fucking New York, where it was good and we didn’t have hunters breathing down our necks, where building a pack wasn’t a declaration of war. I say you get off your fucking ancestral territory power trip bullshit and look at the fact that you think some sixteen year old is going to be your _mate_ , I mean, do you even listen to yourself? There’s no way that’s going to work, there’s no-” he breaks off with a weary hand over his face, feeling the scruff on his cheeks and remembering that he should shave.

Laura’s face turns furious and carved out of stone as she slaps her lipstick down on the counter and picks up a tube of mascara, unscrewing it like it’s personally offended her.

“That’s fucking great, Derek. That’s really fantastic,” she snarls, waving the lash wand around like she’s going to stab him or draw on him, she hasn’t quite decided yet, “I’m so glad that we’ve talked about these things and that you’re willing to speak your emotions. If you didn’t want to come back you shouldn’t have,” she spits, and swipes at her eyes with the mascara.

“Because you could have taken on Peter on your own,” he snaps. It’s still too much to think of, that he saw Peter’s jaws lock around Laura’s shoulder and shake, and her eyes had been so wide as he opened up to bite her again, in the throat, and Derek had panicked. That was what had allowed Laura to snap his neck. Otherwise, she’d be-

Laura snorts gracelessly and takes her time screwing her mascara back together, but when she’s finished her shoulders go limp and she braces her hands against the counter, spine and head bowed like a bent coat hanger. He suddenly sees her not as Laura, his sister and Alpha, headstrong and competent. He sees her as Laura Hale, twenty-four and lost as he is. More so, because as old as he is he’s still her responsibility. 

She raises her head and rakes her hair away from her open mouth and eyes, then turns to look at him. Her lipstick is smeared.

“Derek, sometimes I think you don’t remember that I wasn’t cut out for this. Mom trained me to be Bradley’s Beta. I was never supposed to make the big decisions, I was supposed to be the lieutenant, and you were supposed to be able to go to college and marry some human and be as happy as could be. And now I-” she chokes a little, eyelashes fluttering, and then the next thing he knows she’s got her hands cupped around his face, her thumbs bruising his cheekbones as she strokes his stubble, eyes burning up.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” she murmurs, her voice broken and swollen, “I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know why we’re here or why we need these people with us, I just- I just know that this is what’s right, I know this is what I need to do to make you whole again.” 

He swallows and takes her hands in his. 

“Laura, it’s not your job to fix me, Jesus Christ,” he manages hoarsely, and she shakes her head fierce and nearly shifted with rage.

“It is, I’m your sister, I should be able to make it right, I should be able-”

“No, Laura, shut up, shut the hell up,” he growls, and hugs her so tight that the thought of letting go, even if he breaks her bones, is the worst.

_Look what you did to her, Derek_ a yellow voice hisses in his head as Laura lets out one awful sob and curls into his chest, _Look how guilty she is over what you did and what you are. Look how you’ve broken her. You break everything you touch._

“Just tell me,” Laura pleads into his neck, “just tell me what’s wrong, tell me what hurt you and let me hurt it back.”

He stiffens up even though he tries not to, and Laura goes taut in his arms and then pushes away, explosive with fury and hurt wrapped in her sanguine eyes. 

“Laura, wait-”

But she elbows her way past him. When he’s shaken off the bruise it left in his rib, she’s come back from her room, wriggling into her jeans and jacket, her boots in one hand and her shirt in the other. She swept her makeup off the counter into one elbow and disappeared out the front door with an echoing slam and nary a backwards glance.

Derek decided to go introduce Isaac to the wonders of smoking.

There was something wholly unintimidating about an older guy offering a teenager a cigarette, Derek thought, even if neither of them smoked. It was like a teacher offering extra credit to that one student who really, really needed it and promising to keep it a secret. Derek had smoked, for a while- nicotine had a small bite to it that he liked, but Laura couldn’t stand the stink. There was no place for addiction or cancer in his body, so the effects were pretty negligent.

He found Isaac buried hip-deep in books in the library, and one look at his frazzled, frustrated face gave Derek the lift he needed to slide in across from him at the table and slap his book shut, narrowly avoiding catching a finger.

“You look like you could use a break,” he says, and Isaac lets himself be guided outside, albeit very warily. He doesn’t take a puff on the lit cigarette until Derek rolls his eyes and snatches it out of his fingers to take a drag himself, and when he’s let the smoke slip out of his nose, Isaac takes a practiced pull on it and coughs himself red in the face.

They talk. Not about much, but Derek tries to explain what he remembers of Snow Falling on Cedars and Isaac looks bewildered. Despite how bad he is at it, Isaac gets loose by the end of the first cigarette, and sticks around for a second while Derek tries to ask in the least creepy way possible if he wants to meet again later.

“If you’re asking me out for coffee, I don’t do older guys,” Isaac replies, eyes raking him. Not appreciative, but speculative. Like he’s trying to gauge if he ought to find Derek attractive, rather than if he does at all. It’s kind of odd, and kind of endearing.

“I don’t do younger guys, so it’s not a date. We can meet up as friends,” he says, widening his eyes at Isaac until he snorts, and Derek lets smoke roll out of his nose again. He’s still trying to work out why this is so easy. Just then, his phone beeps.

It’s only been about two hours, but Laura’s already texted him, “ _Sock on the door tonight. Might not want to come home, may be loud. ;D_ ” like that’s totally fine, like she doesn’t want to eviscerate him and rub it in his face.

“Dude, are you o-” 

The phone snaps in his hand, and Isaac jumps as plastic pieces clatter to the pavement.

“Sorry. Piece of shit,” he forces himself to grumble, and picks up the pieces to dump in the trash, along with his cigarette butts. Isaac still looks spooked, but puzzled.

“We’ll talk later,” he says, and once Isaac nods, he heads out to the woods, and the ancient shell of a house waiting for him.


	6. I wanna keep you like a Tamagotchi, but I'm afraid I'd break the reset button

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started my spring semester classes today. My GPA really needs raising this term, so I don't know how much time I'll have to work on Torn. I'm going to attempt to keep the weekly schedule and keep replying to comments, but there is the distinct possibility I might fall behind. If that happens, I might open an askblog to keep momentum rolling? I'm not sure. What I do know is that if I fall behind on this I might end up falling off the bandwagon for a while unless I can pick myself up again, so you might want to be prepared for slow updates or a hiatus if that's what my grades require.

Derek risks coming back to the apartment around five the next morning. By the time he's reached their landing he can hear Laura and someone else who must be Stiles sleeping soundly, and he holds his breath until he’s in his room and has stuffed the cracks in the doors with old shirts.

He falls into bed fully clothed and the next thing he knows is someone sitting on the bed and touching his hair.

It’s a nice touch, and for a minute he sighs wistfully into his pillow. He doesn’t feel like he’s slept enough, doesn’t think he dreamed at all, and even though his jeans are creased and pinching he’s so comfortable he could stay like that forever.

“If you’re trying to suck up, you can quit it right now,” Derek says. The hand quickly jerks away, which is when he registers that the tiny line of odd, raised tissue on the finger that glide across his temple is a scar, and that means it can’t be Laura.

His eyes snap open, and Stiles is sitting on the side of his bed, staring unapologetically at him.

“The fuck are you doing,” is the only thing that Derek can come up with in response, and it sounds all garbled and sleepy as he struggles to sit up. Stiles leans away, but doesn’t move or look at all abashed to be in a strangers room, having been caught touching their hair as they sleep.

“Laura told me to wake you up, and be nice about it. She says you aren’t sleeping well, but you haven’t been eating well either, and she made breakfast.”

Laura is a very accomplished cook, but something about it embarrasses her, so she’s only ever cooked on Derek’s birthday or special occasions or when he can beg her to, so that she’s doing it now speaks to how sorry she is.

Not that that really changes anything, considering the red algae bloom of a hickey on Stiles’ neck.

“What the hell,” is all he can manage, again, and Stiles has this weird look on his face when he looks up from grinding his palms into his eyes. He doesn’t like it, and glares pointedly at Stiles hand, right next to his thigh on the sheets, until it moves.

“Get out so I can change,” he says, slightly more coherently this time, and Stiles’ eyebrows look like they want to object with some kind of ridiculous innuendo so Derek cuts off with a look. Derek is highly concerned that either Stiles’ face is so communicative that he can read all of that or that Derek is so astute on Stiles’ facial expressions that he can read all that. Either way it’s horrible, and he stands up and gets close enough to imply that he will physically haul Stiles out of his room if that’s what it takes. Stiles seems to get the message.

He comes out two minutes later shirtless and in his baggiest, rattiest sweatpants and nearly runs into Laura on his way into the kitchen. She’s got a plate full of hash browns, the ones Bradley taught her how to make when they were little, and they smell overwhelmingly of bacon fat and rosemary and starch. His favorite. She hands it to him, along with a cup of scorching hot coffee, wordless and pleading with her eyes.

There’s smudged make-up around her mouth. He says nothing, just kisses her on the cheek wearily and sits down across from Stiles.

It’s quiet for long enough that Derek can almost forget Stiles and Laura, focusing on eating and the little zing of a rush that the coffee gives him before it’s gone again.

“So werewolves,” Stiles eventually says, and Derek can’t say that he wasn’t expecting Laura to tell him, but he didn’t think she’d do it all at once.

Laura looks much too pleased with her hands wrapped around her mug of tea and her gaze fond when she looks at Stiles. Much too fond, too fast. Shit. This is all a little too domestic for his liking, and now that he notices, Stiles is even wearing one of her sweatshirts, some awful canary yellow thing that stretches dangerously over his shoulders.

“What about it?” he asks, and Stiles waves his hand in the air, seemingly grasping at some concept that was far away.

“I don’t know, man! I dunno. It’s just, yesterday I was watching Underworld and laughing at how bad the special effects were, and now I’ve learned it’s not far off from the truth. And all the weird shit going on in town-” he stops and shakes his head, and Derek can see tangents linking up in his eyes like stars.

“The dead guy at the video store. The pictures. That was one of you, right?”

He doesn’t seem all that disturbed by the fact that he could be potentially sitting at the table with a pair of killers, and Derek shoots Laura a look. She shrugs and flaps a hand. She wants him to take over. Splendid.

“No. That was Uncle Peter,” Derek says around a mouthful. Stiles makes a face, and he’s not sure if it’s disgusted or confused.

“I thought you guys were...” he trails off meaningfully, and Derek shoots him a nasty look.

“Peter was hospitalized after the fire. Catatonic. He healed while we were in New York and snuck out of the hospital. Started killing people.”

“Whoa. So is he still running around?”

“No,” Derek says simply, and tries not to think on how guiltless he is on the matter. Peter died a good death before he’d killed too many people, and was able to get the burial the rest of their family didn’t, since the wills hadn’t been read until it was too late and it was technically illegal to bury them on Hale property.

“Okay,” Stiles says, looking like he’s thinking hard from the furrow between his brows, but he’s focused on Derek like there’s something on his face that he wants to solve. It’s disconcerting. When he inhales, the both of them smell faintly of sex still, and it turns his stomach, the way it’s nearly sweet on Stiles.

He starts folding his napkin into triangles without even thinking about it, and Laura quickly snatches the paper out of his hands with a quick look at Stiles. For an irrational half second, he wants desperately to hit her for that, then beats it down and forces his his hands still. They tremble around his cup anyways, and Stiles looks entirely too knowing.

Suddenly there’s a knock on the door, and Derek is so startled that he didn’t hear the heartbeat first that his cup shatters in his hands. Laura makes a disgruntled noise and shoves the stack of napkins at him as she gets up to get the door.

“That’ll be Scott, be right back,” she says, and he snaps before he can stop himself.

“You going to sleep with him too?”

Laura pins him with red eyes, her fury a wave of tangible sensation, and he ducks his face away to focus on the broken mug. She goes to answer the door.

“Slut shaming your sister for something that didn’t even happen. Brava,” Stiles says coolly, and Derek jerks to look at him.

“Didn’t happen, right. You stink like sex, so don’t even-”

“We made out and I took care of myself in the bathroom because I barely know her, and I’m kind of in love with someone else,” Stiles says, snappish, but his eyes are still trying to unpuzzle Derek. He cleans up coffee and porcelain mechanically, trying to take in his own relief.

“Do you have some kind of anxiety disorder or something?” Stiles as he gets up to throw away the shards. He stops, glaring.

“ _No_ ,” he says, but something in his voice isn’t right, and Stiles nods like he figured something out.

Scott and Laura come in then, Scott looking hesitant and rebellious and Laura trying to be welcoming, even though she’s still roiling at Derek. He takes up another napkin and starts folding it into squares this time, and when Laura reaches for it Stiles is suddenly distracting her with a touch to her wrist and a word about some online game or something. Derek grits his teeth at that- he doesn’t want interference or pity, though he is grateful that he wasn’t disrupted again, and Scott’s looking at him funny as he sits between him and Stiles.

“So I was totally right, they want to recruit us into their pedo sex cult,” Stiles says with aplomb to Scott, who jumps, looks shocked, notices the hickey and weird sweatshirt on Stiles, and then glares at, of all people, Derek.

“I’m not joining a sex cult, and neither are you,” he declares loudly, and Laura laughs.

“It’s not a sex cult. It’s a werewolf pack.”

“Jesus, Laura,” he mutters, and Stiles grins at him.

“Werewolf pack,” Scott repeats slowly, “is that some kind of code? Or is it an online thing?”

Derek rolls his eyes, but he’s secretly starting to like Scott, maybe. He likes that he and Stiles are such good friends, and he’s kind of jealous of it if he stops to think about it. But right now he’s too caught in _something that didn’t happen_ and how Stiles seemed to figure him out, even if it’s a little.

“I’m going for a run,” he says, once he’s cleaned his plate. Laura beams, her anger seemingly forgotten now that he’s eaten and she’s socializing.

As Derek leaves, he sees Stiles slip the creased up napkin into his pocket.


	7. Hell doesn't spring loose, it leaks slowly into your ears and drips out of your mouth like a sickness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not completely happy with this chapter, mostly because of the scene between Erica and Derek, and it and the next chapter were supposed to be one big part. My schoolwork and job and certain medical situations have made me decide that I'm going to adjust my update schedule to every two weeks, so expect to see how Kate wrecks havoc by the fifteenth.

When Derek comes home from the his shift at the bar (him and Laura swap, the customers like that the bartenders look a bit like twins) Laura has the counter loaded up with bottles, and she turns to pout at him.

“You didn’t answer your phone! You totally should have, then I wouldn’t have had to shell out so much for all this, you coulda just swiped some for me.”

“Uh,” he says articulately, keys jingling in his palm, “is there a party I don’t know about?”

She grins, actually bounces on her toes. She’s wearing a pair of Stiles’ too-big lacrosse socks, from the smell. Derek isn’t sure if he wants to know where she got them from, if she stole them or if they were a gift.

“Yes! We’re throwing a party and all our little wannabes are invited. So shower. Or, yaknow, don’t. I’m planning on hurling you at Erica, by the way, so don’t go on an underage high-and-mighty kicker until later. This is all about incentive.”

“I actually don’t have any qualms about seducing Erica,” Derek says, because he doesn’t. It’s not like he’d actually be seducing her, anyways. She’s smart enough not to let herself be, he’s seen that much. Seduction is all about needing something to complete you, or thinking that you do, and Erica is already strong enough to know who she is and what she wants. She just needs, like Laura says, incentive. The knowledge that she can be desirable and powerful seems pretty good to him.

“Oh, so I don’t get to reenact the Big Bad stereotype, but you do?” Laura sneers, and he throws his keys at her. She catches them and lobs them back, fast enough that they sting his fingers.

“Is that his shirt, too?” Derek asks, because it looks big and unfamiliar, the scent a little like an intrusion on Laura’s Alpha/sweet pea shampoo/Fruit Loop scent. She thrusts her arms out, her grin smug as sugar.

“Yup! He said I could borrow it. Well, sort of. I offered to return it, at least.”

Derek gets closer, brow furrowed, and buries his nose in the cloth at her shoulder. Laura made him watch that _Perfume: Story of a Murderer_ movie once, and it surprised him how well they captured the idea of a scent, it’s many layers. The notes of Stiles scent are all good ones, mixes of mint from mouthwash and toothpaste and gum, Irish Spring that’s almost too strong, and some clear, heady, strong thing that’s almost like vanilla in sweetness, but no- more like fresh-cut cedar. Ink and dust and some bitter thing that brings it all together, a medicine that he can’t tell the purpose of.

“Derek,” Laura says, at once a question and a demand, and he backs off with surprise.

“Sorry. Just- I can see what you meant. About him smelling like a mate,” he says lamely. It’s true. Normal people don’t smell that good, normal people don’t smell especially different from one another when it boils down to it, and normal people scents don’t make him want to roll around on their dirty clothes.

Laura glares at him spitefully, bunching the shirt up over her nose.

“Mine,” she hisses, and wanders off to the bathroom.

“Huh,” he says to himself, and sets about organizing the truly staggering amount of bottles on the counter.

When Laura comes out of the shower, she’s flushed from orgasm and wearing shorts that weren’t actually jeans that had been cut up at one point, even though it’s practically winter. She frowns at him as she towels her hair dry, and he stares blandly up at her, mouth full of sandwich.

“Look, the more I talk to him, the more I realize...Stiles is it for me, okay? And I don’t want you to ruin that.”

He stops chewing, staring up at her reproachfully.

“Ruin it,” he repeats when his mouth is empty, and Laura bites her lip, hands shoved in her tiny shorts pockets.

“I know you wouldn’t mean to, but- he likes you. And it’d be easy. You can be friends with him, really, but just- don’t get too close,” she says, face screwed up like she already knows she’s fucked the conversation up. He knows what she means, though, and dusts crumbs off his pants when he stands up.

“I didn’t really have any plans for getting close to him, Laura. It’s fine,” he says. Even to his own ears, he sounds weary. He’s thinking too much about Kate lately, about- about becoming like her. It’d be easy. The easiness of it scares him. Sometimes he wonders how close he is to that end result of madness, if it’ll be all at once or it’ll creep up on him slow. This is what makes his hands itch to fix something, and what makes him sure not to think anything untowards about Scott or Stiles or Isaac or Erica or Boyd. Not that he would anyways, it’s just- sometimes he wonders if Laura’s path wouldn’t be easier, if he could make peace with it rather than stay so keyed up from fear of it. He reaches out to right a bottle, turn it so the label faces square with the counter’s edge, and Laura grabs his wrist and turns his hand up, inspecting his face now.

“You’re getting worse,” she says, glancing down at his hands. There’s no marks- there never have been- but she looks like she’s looking for something anyways. 

He slides his hand out of her grasp, not meeting her eyes. It’s feels too close to outright disobedience, and makes his stomach curl. This isn’t what he wants, this distance between him and Laura but- it’s necessary, Derek reminds himself, if he wants to keep her from finding out.

God, since when is that the mantra of his life?

_Fuck_ Beacon Hills, man.

The doorbell interrupts Derek avoiding looking at Laura and Laura trying to practice phrenology on her brother with just her eyes, and there’s a semi-mad dash to open the door and for Derek to lock their bedroom doors, because if there’s one of them that has territory issues, it’s him. 

Then suddenly, all at once, there’s a handful of misfit teenagers and music and Solo cups being passed around, and Derek is severely out of his element until Erica, shy but confident, presses a cup into his hand. Her hair is frazzled and there’s a bandage on her cheek, but she’s wearing lipgloss and a skirt. She’s _trying_ , and giving him this desperate look that makes him sad because he remembers being fifteen and willing anyone to look at him. 

He tells himself he’s a different kind of monster from Kate when he tows her into his bedroom and gives her the speech he’s worked out, about how she won’t have to go to the hospital anymore or take medicine, about how she won’t have to try to make boys look. How strong he can see she is, how she’ll never have to be scared to go to school or drive ever again.

Her mouth tastes like fake strawberries, and her intake of breath as he rakes his hands up her thighs isn’t exciting, isn’t good. More than anything, he wishes this were over.

She finds that out the hard way when she tries to get a hand in his pants, and he lets her get a handful before he pulls her hand out, grimacing shyly even if he’s glad for the excuse. Even if it might undo his hard work.

“Oh, oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” Erica says, unwinding her legs from around his waist, all abashed as she tries and fails to fix his hair, and then her skirt. For a second Derek isn’t sure about his footing with her, and then she gushes, “I didn’t know- but the jeans, and the hair, it should have been obvious that you were gay, sorry.”

“I’ll try not to take offense at the stereotype,” he says blithely. It’s at least a quarter true, anyways, enough that he doesn’t feel anything but grateful. She lets him go, and he isn’t sure where he wants to be until he sees the door to the balcony, a space the size of a fridge turned on it’s side and made of concrete, is open.

Whoever it was that opened the door left a cigarette burning in an ashtray. Derek doesn’t have an ashtray, and for a second he wants to ask someone where it came from, but he just closes the door behind him and takes up the forgotten roll of tobacco, takes a pull from it that sears his lungs a little.

Sometime after his lungs have healed and he’s grinding the filter into the ashtray, the door opens behind him. He gets a whiff of Laura’s scent and immediately tips the ashtray over the ledge of the balcony, trying to look nonchalant as he says,

“Boy, someone was smoking out here, it smells terrible.”

“Wow, that was _smooth_ ,” Stiles snorts, and he looks over his shoulder to see Stiles holding two cups and shutting the door behind him with his hip, cutting off the sound of music and talking with a grin.

“Shut up, I thought you were Laura,” he says, and accepts the cup Stiles passes to him. Piss-yellow beer inside, and he debates about taking a sip. It’s sour as all get out, and he probably makes a face.

“You always afraid of Big Bad Sis?” Stiles says, his grin diabolical, and then he completely ruins it by groping for the straw- the straw, Jesus, is he two- in his drink with his lips, gnashing it between his teeth as soon as he catches it.

“Uh, yeah, you would be too if she broke your hands for smoking,” he says, and doesn’t even think about how that must sound until Stiles’ eyebrows do some kind of spastic dance of shock and he spits out the straw. Usually he can get away with that kind of thing because people don’t take him seriously. 

“What, seriously? That’s- that’s way too harsh, man, how are you not-” He makes some sort of gesture that Derek is beyond interpreting, and he turns to lean against the railing, shrugging.

“It heals in under a minute, and it’s- the smell of something burning sets her off,” he says, pressing in the sides of his plastic cup until they dent, then letting it pop back out again. Stiles grimaces and leans against the railing next to him, his own cup abandoned.

“I can see how that would freak her out. But still. There’s a way to freak out without hurting people,” he says, and his eyes are out there, looking at the darkness that he can’t really see, and his words are just as far away.

Derek isn’t an idiot, he knows hurt when he sees it. And he wants to ask about it, because he’s pretty sure if he did, Stiles wouldn’t answer, per say, but he’d know that he could, if he wanted to. Derek likes being able to do that for people, even if he hasn’t really had occasion to for a while now. And maybe Stiles wouldn’t expect him to open up either, maybe Stiles would be understanding about it.

But Laura said not to get too close, and that is the very definition of getting close. So he keeps his mouth shut until the moment slips off, and Stiles looks at him with this half-smile that shouldn’t be so bitter.

“Seriously though, you two are like, way too co-dependent. And do you do everything she says?” he asks, taking another sip from his drink, and Derek copies him on reflex to avoid shrugging.

“She’s the Alpha,” he says simply, and Stiles snorts.

“Well, if that’s what being the Alpha means, I dunno how much I want to be a wolf,” he says, and Derek realizes his mistake instantly.

“It wouldn’t be like that for you. You’d be on the same level as her, you can contest her decisions if you want. You wouldn’t be a Beta,” he says, and tries to think about what that would be like. Not even just having an Alpha pair again, but Laura and Stiles as mates, how Stiles would work with and around her to guide the pack. Would he be good at it? There’s a difference between being people-smart and being good at people, after all. Derek’s kind of a living monument to that fact.

“Still, the imbalance of power it like, yikes. I don’t wanna boss you guys around without you even having a say. Where’s the bureaucracy? This is not the Third Reich, man, this is high school,” he says, looking a little blown away by what he’s saying, and Derek wonders how the hell the conversation keeps getting so off track.

“That’s how werewolves work, Stiles. And Betas can contest the Alpha’s decisions. I do it to Laura all the time. The only thing is, she doesn’t have to listen if she doesn’t want to, and I do. And she frequently doesn’t want to.”

Stiles nods, leaning back until his elbows hit the railing, leaving his hands to dangle by his hips. For a moment he looks fiercely determined and lost in thought, and then he looks up at Derek, a challenge in his eyes that makes him certain that even if Stiles wasn’t good at pack dynamics, he’d be scrappy as hell in a fight.

“Would you be any different? If you were Alpha, would you listen to your Betas?”

“I can’t be Alpha, Laura’s the Alpha,” he says, in some sort of reflex that demands he state obvious fact. Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, but if you could be? Would you listen?”

The question throws him for so much of a loop that when Isaac opens the door he jumps a little, beer threatening to slosh out of his cup. Stiles sighs expansively and grins at Isaac, then thumps him on the shoulder.

“He’s all yours. And I think that was your ashtray that he dumped onto the street, by the way,” he says, and disappears back into the party. 

“You look like someone punched you in the face,” Isaac observes as he leans over the railing, trying to spot the ashtray on the street, but it’s black on black and his eyes are human.

“Stiles is a weirdo,” he says as explanation, and he and Isaac go through the typical smoker’s exchange of offering and sharing a lighter. He flicks ashes into the piss-yellow beer he wasn’t really drinking anyways and asks Isaac about his English project.

They’re arguing about theme when suddenly Boyd yanks open the door, grim-faced.

“Laura says to get in here, Derek. Someone’s coming. Someone named Argent.”

Derek’s blood freezes, but he moves faster than the others do, to Laura’s side from where she’s standing stock still next to the couch. They both watch the door until there’s a knock, and Erica punches the mute button on the stereo so that it’s suddenly dead silent.

“Scott, answer the door,” Laura says quietly, and Scott does.

Kate steps inside with Chris at her heels and grins down at Scott, patting him on the cheek.

“Hey there, Scottie. Nice to see you. Although I gotta say,” and here she looks up, flashing a menacing grin at Derek, “I’m not exactly impressed by the company you’re keeping.”


	8. Swallowing dynamite will tattoo firework bruises under your skin

"Kate. Chris," Laura says. She's stiff but in control, not like Derek. He feels like a hurricane, feeling too fast to show anything at all but tension. 

"Come on, kids, party's over," Chris says, holding the door open, and Derek wants to gather all of them up and hide them from the eyes of hunters, hide them somewhere safe. This is going to be a shitstorm, he can feel it looming.

"We'll stay, if it's all the same to you," Stiles pipes up.

Chris looks at him, and then at Scott. If looks could set fire...

"Does your dad know you're here, Stiles? I'm sure he'd be pleased to pick up a group of buzzed teenagers from a couple of suspected arsonist's apartment. And Scott. I've told you to stay away from these people if you want to stay with Allison.”

“No offense, sir,” Scott says, solid if not nervous, “but they’re my friends. And as soon as we leave, you’re going to try to hurt them. So we’ll stay.” 

Kate tsks, ruffling Scott’s curls roughly enough that he ducks away with a scowl. 

“You sure know how to pick them, Laura. But I told your Beta. You’re not biting anyone.”

She turns to look at Laura, and his sister stiffens. 

“Nothing’s going on here. It’s just a party,” she says, and Kate shakes her head with a warm smile.

“No, see, we’re not that stupid, are we, Derek? We know what’s going on here. They all know what’s going on, and you wouldn’t tell them about us unless you intended to give them the bite.” She saunters closer to him, eyes locked on Laura, but she gets close enough that if he inhales he’ll be able to smell her, the sickly-sweet smell that clings to her hair. If it were possible for him to recoil, he would.

“Derek?” Laura repeats, brow creased in confusion, and Kate was waiting for that, must have, because she grins and turns to him.

“Oh, don’t look so sour, sweetheart. I did tell you I’d skin your pretty little sister alive if you even thought about making them pack, didn’t I? Don’t make me carry out that threat, I wouldn’t want to ruin my shoes,” she says, and curls her hands into the waistband of his jeans. The scrape of her knuckles against his bare skin makes him clench tight all over, swaying back on his heels as much as he can to escape her hungry eyes.

“You’re so tense. If you’ve forgotten how to relax, babe, I can always teach you again,” she purrs, her eyes darting over him like he’s something to eat, and the horror welling up in his throat tastes like bile. Laura is right there. Chris is right there. Stiles and Scott and Erica and Isaac and Boyd are _right there_ and he can’t look at anyone, can’t do anything more than inhale and inhale and inhale that sweet-sick, cloying smell and remember the taser she pressed to his ribs as she rode him, and kept saying, “If you can hold it off until after I come then I won’t tase you, come on, you’ve got all that control, show me,” but he was fifteen and she kept dragging it out-

“Kate,” Chris barks, and her expression flashes dark, utter hate for one second before she smirks and releases him. 

“Aw, Chris, I’m just having a little fun,” she says, but she falls back to his side.

Chris is staring at him, and all Derek can do is shake his head minutely. His expression tightens in response, and he looks to Laura.

“No more of this, Laura. There’s enough bad blood between our families. Keep in line and there won’t be more.”

Laura glares with teeth bared, and Chris leaves. Kate takes one long second to look around the room, looking like she’s cataloging all the faces there, and she spares Derek one last toothy grin before she disappears with the snap of the door shutting.

Laura turns on him, eyes red. He doesn’t know what to do, how to breathe, what to say. There’s a fuzz like mold, like white noise, muffling everything in his brain but panic and fear. 

“I’m sorry,” comes falling out of his mouth, as subtle as a brick, and for a second she can’t hold the shift back, but there’s only a flash of fang and fur before she turns to Scott.

“Out. All of you. Now.”

They leave, and Derek stands there numbly as Laura paces. 

“Kate Argent. Kate fucking Argent, Derek! Just what, exactly, were you thinking?”

He’s asked himself this question a million times and never found the answer, or never one that isn’t bullshit, so he stays silent. 

Laura knots her hands in her hair, pulling hard enough to turn her forehead white and staring at him.

“I need to go,” she says thickly, “I need to go get my head on right, you just- you stay here, okay? I’m gonna be back in a couple hours.”

Feet shuffle, and then the door closes and it’s just him, and he can’t breathe still and he feels so fucking stupid for the way he’s reacting, Laura didn’t do anything (yet), she didn’t say she was mad (she was), and he’s all the pack she has left (that could change in an instant, she’s already proven she can kill family). 

Even with no one there, Derek feels too exposed, too seen, and he wants the wet hitching in his chest and the dry burn in his eyes to go away, he wants to curl up under the covers and never come out, to run until there’s nothing but that melody of adrenaline in his veins. Instead he drops to the couch and presses his knees to his temples and lets the panic bubble over, mindless in terror he’s been repressing. It’s hours until he’s aware of anything else, and then it’s just that there are cups and trash strewn around, that his face is wet and scratchy. He can’t do anything about it, though. He’s worn and tired and if he starts to clean he’ll never stop, but holding it in is like holding back a wave with your bare hands. That confliction makes him so impotently angry that he forces himself to be still.

Derek stares around at the living room, huddled on the couch like a child, for a full hour and a half before his eyes land on Peter’s laptop. He unfolds from the couch and sits at the desk, movements slow and creaky with fatigue. It’s stupid to try, he thinks as he sets his fingers to the keyboard, it’s stupid to hope. It’s just something to poke at.

He tries the first thing he can think of. _Derek betrayed us._

The usual denial message fails to pop up. Instead, a loading screen.

Peter knowing that, Peter putting that as his password, makes the cycle of anxiety and crushing panic and fear threaten to repeat itself. Of course Peter knew, though. That was what Peter did, he knew things and he’d use them to make fun of you, before. This feels the same as being teased by his uncle about his teeth, and yet a thousand fold worse.

There are files there, scattered across the desktop like leaves. Copies of old books that he remembers from Mom’s library, important documents like birth certificates, even an odd folder labelled “newspaper clippings”. Inside are birth and death announcements dating back about seventy years. 

But most importantly, there are two folders labelled “family movies” and “family pictures”. Because Derek must be a masochist at heart, he clicks on them.

The files are named things like “sophies30thbirthday.jpeg” and “bradleybrokehisleg.wmv”, but the one that draws his eye is “cathyanddavesanniversary<3.wmv”. It opens to a grainy, wobbly shot of the kitchen- yellow, full of light, the trees through the window green. And him and Laura and Bradley and Sarah, a cake balanced on top of Sarah’s five year old head, him standing behind it to hold it up, and Laura and Bradley struggling to shove an absurd amount of candles into it.

“Peter, not yet, we’re not finished!” Bradley bellows, chucking a candle at him, and Sarah warbles, “Derek, hold it, it’s heavy!”

“I’m friggin’ trying, Sarah, shut up,” he snaps, and Laura smacks all of them in one move. It’s so rote that none of them even flinch, and Peter cackles warmly behind the camera.

Derek wants nothing more than to slam the laptop lid shut, but then Peter sing-songs, “Oh, David! Cathy! Your little pack has something to show you!”

“Peter!” Bradley snaps, and gives him the finger.

“You’d better put that finger down before I break it off,” his father’s voice intones, deep and only teasing. His mother wanders on screen, her tank top slipping off one shoulder and a wide grin on her face.

“I forgot,” Laura says, behind him, so silent that he jumps, “what Dad sounded like. What color Mom’s hair was exactly.”

Derek stands, heart hammering, and after a moment of deliberation, tips his chin towards his shoulder.

“By pack rites, my life is in your hands,” he says with his voice as neutral as possible, and when Laura shoves him to the ground he lets her, submits to the hands that grab his face easily.

“Don’t you say that!” she snaps, eyes red and crinkled with hurt, “Don’t you say that I can kill you, I would never do that, do you understand me?”

“I betrayed-”

“You were fifteen and she was a predator, how were you supposed to know what she would do? If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I was supposed to teach you about hunters and danger and I thought, no, Derek’s too young, it can wait until he’s older. I shouldn’t have waited, I shouldn’t have let you get hurt,” she says, and buries her face in his shoulder.

Derek doesn’t know what to do except fold his arms around her cautiously, and she nuzzles closer for a moment before sitting up. She sniffles a couple of times, pushing her hair out of her face, and then lets out a sigh as she looks around.

“I should clean up or something. And you should make pancakes.”

Derek glances around and notes that it’s light out. Gentler than usual, he pushes Laura off of him.

“I’ll clean, you make food. And then we have to do the emotion thing, I think,” he says. It already feels like too much weight, but the fact that Laura’s not actually mad at him and isn’t going to put him in an early grave is doing wonders for his mood.

He has the apartment cleared up in what feels like record time, although there’s a sticky ring on the coffee table that screams “Go get a Magic Eraser” at him. It feels good to work at something tangible, and once it’s clean Derek feels a little like he can breathe again. Laura calls him into the kitchen and hands him a plate stacked with pancakes, and they sit at the table across from one another.

Now that he’s looking at her, Derek can see the lines that have appeared around her mouth, the way her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, the frazzled tangle of her hair. She’s stressed, just as much as he’s been stressed, and most of it must be because of him. 

He ducks his eyes when she examines him in return, and she huffs.

“You’ve never been scared of me before, Derek. Look at me.”

He takes a breath through his nose and does. 

“It’s because of her, isn’t it? The OCD,” she says, and he fidgets with his fork.

“Not completely. It’s stress. I don’t know if I had it before or not, but after it was- I hid most of it from you,” he says, and her expression goes stony for a moment before it clears. 

“I should send you back to New York, where you’ll be safe,” she says, stabbing a bite of pancake viciously with her fork, and he tenses.

“No. I won’t go. You need me here.”

“I need you happy and healthy, Derek, not shaking at the thought of her,” she snaps, and he grits his teeth hard. The fork folds around his fingers, and he struggles to straighten it out for a moment before he speaks.

“It’s not that bad, okay. I have it under-”

“If you say control, I’m gonna-”

She stops herself in a rare fit of temperance, and licks her lips for a moment before speaking.

“Okay. What I need to know is what sets you off.”

“You and Stiles,” he answers instantly, and then wants to button up his mouth for the way her expression goes wide-open and hurt.

“Fuck,” she says, leaning her face into her hands, “I didn’t even think- I’m sorry, Der, I am.”

“It’s fine,” he says tightly. She’s treating him like glass, and it’s starting to get annoying.

“Okay. So I can-” she stops, thinking hard and desperately from the furrow in her brows.

“You don’t have to make accommodations for me, Laura. Do what you want with Stiles. It’s fine.”

“You’re sure-”

“It’s fine.”

She makes a face but nods.

“Alright. Uh. But you should really like...see someone.”

He stares at her for so long that she snaps her fingers in his face.

“Jesus, blink, you creepy little bastard,” she says nervously, and he blinks purposely about three times before he snaps out,

“And tell them what, exactly, that Kate burned out our whole family because they were werewolves?”

Laura winces, “No, but at least...I dunno! Alright, here, when was the last time you properly had sex with someone?”

That’s an easy answer, but he rolls his eyes.

“Define properly, because you wouldn’t believe some of the crazy-”

“Alright, ew, enough. I mean like, you knew their name and you were in a bed and you kissed and there were condoms?”

“We don’t need condoms,” he points out, “I mean, unless you’re talking about blowjobs or easy clean-up.”

Laura just facepalms, giggling a little helplessly.

“Derek, my point is, you’ve never had a healthy relationship. Fuck, forget a healthy romantic relationship, I’m just saying sexually, have you ever had a good time?”

He could make an innuendo, and is half tempted to, but when he opens his mouth to speak nothing comes out, and he snaps it shut again. Laura makes a face, a crumpled and broken and helpless face that makes him feel like shit.

“That’s what I thought.”

For a minute it’s quiet, and then Laura finishes her pancakes and shoves his plate closer to him.

“Eat. I didn’t make those for my health. I’m gonna go watch some more of those videos.”

Derek eats, and he listens to his family’s voice, and isn’t sure what to make of himself or his sister. 

By the time he registers his exhaustion Laura is already up and dragging at his arm, the laptop folded to her chest. He makes for his room, but she tugs at him some more, guiding him wordlessly into hers. 

It’s been awhile since they shared a bed- not since their first week in New York, he’s pretty sure. It used to be a usual sort of thing, before. Space never belonged to anyone person in their home, and he wriggles under the covers and when Laura presents her back to him, he loops an arm around her middle and plants his face into her shoulder blade. She keeps the laptop with her, and they fall asleep to Sarah’s third grade choir concert. Her voice is clear and pure as she sings, “Dream A Little Dream of Me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not happy with this, mostly because Derek's panic attack is not up to par, I feel, but I literally just finished it and I want to let you guys have it to read before I fuck with it some more, so there.


	9. A Note to Readers

I'm sorry, but there will be no chapter today, or for the forseeable future.

The other day I re-read the first two chapters of this and compared it to the last two, and I wanted to print it all out just so I could rip it up and set it on fire. My dissatisfaction with my writing mostly stems from the fact that I'm falling back on old habits. This was supposed to be not just an alternate universe, but an exercise in finding different ways to explain things that was more in-depth, instead of using a semi-suitable word and skipping over the heart of the feeling I wanted to achieve. Lately, this fic has not been fun to write at all, and my school work and job are both suffering from how distracted I am by this thing that I feel I need to fix.

Over the spring break, I plan to finish some projects that I've had in the works for some time now, and after that, I will work on re-writing this. Hopefully I will manage to do that quickly, and then will get the story back on track. 

So for the time being, consider this story on hiatus.


End file.
